So I’ve been trying out this new Napster 2.0 music service. I bought maybe 4 or 5 songs. They play great on the desktop computer, but guess what? They don’t transfer to my Pocket PC’s 512Mb SD card! If I try to transfer them via WMP9, I get a license error. If I copy them to the SD card manually, they don’t play. The only way to get these DRM protected Windows Media Audio tracks to play is if you transfer them to the Pocket PC’s main memory! Is this a bug or by design? If it’s by design, then it’s completely idiotic. Does the licensing not allow transfer to removable media? Do I have to burn these 3 songs to a CD then rip the tracks back to non-DRM-protected WMA files so that I can listen to them on my Pocket PC? Well, guess what? The CD writer on the computer I used to download these songs is currently non-functional.
I would’ve thought purchasing a couple songs on Napster would be easier than going out and buying the entire album then ripping the songs I like to WMA so I can listen to them on my Pocket PC. I guess not!
Originally published on Pocketnow on February 9, 2004. More Thought articles from the Pocketnow archive.